Recently a lot of verified accounts were hacked on Facebook. These accounts are now impersonating Meta. They are also purchasing ads and luring people into downloading suspicious links that contain malware. However, such accounts should be easy to identify.
Expert asks
Matt Navarra, a social media consultant, posted on Twitter, “How did this ad get approved @Meta? Verified account impersonating Meta tricking users into downloading shady tools,” with the screenshot of a fake ad. Another verified account was also hacked which is now posing as ‘Google AI’. This account is taking people to fake links for Bard.
As reported
Tech Crunch reported about an account, “That account previously belonged to Indian singer and actress Miss Pooja before the account name was changed on April 29. That account, which operated for at least a decade, boasted more than 7 million followers.”
Some of the hacked accounts sound like official pages of Meta like ‘Meta Ads Manager’, ‘Meta Ads’, etc. These accounts shared unsafe links which appeared on thousands of people’s feeds. A Meta spokesperson said, “While many of the improvements we’ve made are difficult to see – because they minimise people from having issues in the first place – scammers are always trying to get around our security measures.”
Discovery
Meta found out about malware creators last week who were taking advantage of people’s interest in ChatGPT. They were banking on this curiosity to bait people into downloading harmful browser extensions and applications. Meta considers this phenomenon to be similar to cryptocurrency scams. Both exploit the psyche of curious people to gain trust and access to their sensitive and confidential data. The company found at least 10 malware families pretending to be ChatGPT and similar tools to hack as many accounts as possible across the internet.
Meta says
In a security report, Meta wrote, “Over the past several months, we’ve investigated and taken action against malware strains taking advantage of people’s interest in OpenAI’s ChatGPT to trick them into installing malware pretending to provide AI functionality.”
